Governor willing to play ball with Obamacare

Rick Scott campaigned against it when running for governor and once in office, fought it tooth and nail. But in 2010, Republicans failed to win enough Senate seats to pass a repeal the Affordable Care Act, earlier this year a Supreme Court challenge of the new health care law fell short and President Obama's reelection last week leaves Scott little choice but to deal with it.

On Tuesday, Scott signaled that he's willing to make some concessions to the federal Affordable Care Act. But those concessions may be too late for Florida to meet a fast-approaching deadline.

Incoming House Speaker Will Weatherford says Florida won’t meet the a deadline for a state health care exchange.

"I don’t think the state is going to be in a position to have a definitive answer of what our plan is by next Friday," Weatherford said.

Missing the deadline means the feds will launch an exchange for Florida.

The next choice that has to be made is to decide by 2014 whether or not to expand Florida’s Medicaid roles.

The only part of the health care overhaul that the Supreme Court did throw out was a provision to penalize states who did not expand Medicaid, so Florida has options.

The federal government is offering to pay Florida $27 billion over the next 10 years to extend Medicaid to one million more families. Scott is worried about what happens after the money stops in 2024.

Social service advocates say if Florida doesn’t expand its rolls, the money will go to another state.

"We've got a million very low income people who would benefit from that," said Karen Woodall.

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